


The Silence Paradigm

by maybeapples



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anxiety, Assimilation, Character Study, M/M, Metaphors, memory problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeapples/pseuds/maybeapples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time bends in Night Vale in such a way that Carlos finds himself more of a natural philosopher. With memory problems. He deals. </p>
<p>(Or, a story of how Carlos and Night Vale assimilate into each other.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silence Paradigm

Carlos has always had trouble sleeping. At night, his thoughts run in circles and his imagination builds overcomplicated, pointless scenarios. Most days, he lies in the darkness listening to the ticking of a clock until the sound is all that is left in his mind.

For the past several months, he has been too exhausted when he manages to get to the bed, falling into dreamless sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. Now, though, his life is shaping up into something resembling a routine. 

Carlos likes routines. However, that also means that he once again has the luxury to worry instead of resting. Night Vale is too much like the ghost town stories he used to love as a kid, the ones where the traveler, going through a mountain town that isn't on the map, always pokes his nose where he shouldn't, and barely gets away. And he can't tell himself that the shadows in the unlit corners are just shadows. And he can't tell himself to go look and see. 

The room is silent, save for a distant wailing. 

Carlos rolls off the bed, because he can at least determine why the clock isn't ticking, though he isn't sure he wants to change the batteries. It's an old-fashioned local alarm he bought in his first week here, when he realized he forgot his at home.

The clock is not broken. It's ticking, but no sound comes out. 

He makes a note to tinker with the clock as soon as he has free time. He lies down and listens to the wailing. 

 

\-----

 

The radio is on, the low, liquid voice carrying Carlos through another panic attack.

"The Museum of Forbidden Technology is proud to announce that that starting this Friday, they will be hosting [REDACTED], a temporary exhibit brought in by an outside partner that will only be here for three days. The exhibit will be sealed away in a titanium safe box and presented in a toned glass case, and will be accompanied by a series of public lectures during which the podium stand will remain unoccupied and deadly silent.

“We spoke with the curator of the Museum, Nadia Beqiri, about this exciting new development. We weren't able to confirm the exact nature of the exhibit; however, when asked about the partnership, Beqiri broke into a series of chants beyond the range of human hearing, contorting her body into a grotesque approximation of eldritch hieroglyphics. Reliable sources confirm this is probably an indication the exhibit has something to do with the ancient civilization that inhabited the Earth before us.

“So head on downtown this weekend to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There is, after all, such a wealth of things that we don't, and may never, comprehend, and it would truly be a waste not to share our wonder and kinship in the face of the overbearing weight of our insignificance. Remember, one of the holding points of a strong and united community is rallying around a common ignorance.

“There is so much we don't know, dear listeners, but what we do know terrifies us into silence".

Carlos can't hear the meaning of the words, but his breathing slows, trying to match the pitch of the voice. The soundless and frightened walls of his lab contract imperceptibly, falling back on his heart's rhythm. 

 

\------

 

Carlos struggles with the damned internet connection while trying to read up on anthropology, quantum physics, and evolutionary biology, keeping several tabs open at all times. It works only some of the time and with significant scarring, but it's better than the alternative. He's been to the library only once (having never entered and waking up in his bed afterward with a book on his bedside table) and he would like to never repeat that experience again. Even now that the library has doors.

Carlos reads shady bloodstone ritual handbooks and demonology manuals with paranoid skepticism.

He stubbornly keeps trying to find alternatives to pens and pencils. Food coloring, tar, and toothpaste on black paper work best, but it takes too long. This is not an act of defiance; he simply finds that physically tracing thoughts on paper helps him keep mnemonic markers on things he wants to return to later, in a way that typing never does. Another comforting routine.

He keeps correspondence with several contacts from different fields. It was one of them that directed him to the work of Karim Nader, a neuroscientist with a focus on memory. Carlos isn't in Night Vale to study memory, of course; but over the past several months, he has found himself drawing the most obscure connections between different disciplines. 

He knows enough about the structure and inner workings of the brain (certainly by now) to follow most of Nader's work. The hypothesis he poses is that consolidated memories can re-enter states of transient instability following reactivation; in other words, the more you try to recall a particular memory, the more it is altered. 

"We witness exciting times, as neuroscience begins embracing a position, long-held in cognitive psychology, that recognizes memory as a principally dynamic process." The screen blinks at him.

Carlos presses his fingertips to the bridge of his nose, tipping his glasses askew. He has degrees in applied physics and seismology. Anything that compares itself to social sciences makes his brain hurt, and not in the good way. 

He saves the pdf anyway. In the best-case scenario, he will never have to look at it again.

 

\-------------------

 

Earlier in the evening, Carlos had gotten a call from his mother. Night Vale reception is patchy at best, and he rarely gets out-of-Night-Vale calls from anyone but the department head.

"You never answer anymore. Now I know your job keeps you busy, but you can always make time for family," she says.

"It's very good to hear you, too," Carlos says with a smile into the phone.

She asks if he plans to come for Christmas, and then batters him with the same questions about Cecil that she’d asked the last time she’d called. Hearing her voice is a breath of fresh air, and Carlos wishes he could transmit this warmness over the satellite connection. He thinks he almost can.

After a pause in conversation, his mother mentions too casually:

"Ikram came over last week. Said he finally found that mountain climbing gear."

"Ok, cool. Who's Ikram? A friend of yours?" Carlos asks.

"Oh no—don't play that game with me. I don't give a damn how you two feel about each other now, but I told you I wouldn't be taking sides, and you know I wouldn't tolerate either of you talking like that about each other, but especially you, Carlos. I've raised you better than that."

"O-of course, yeah. Sorry, mom," Carlos says, because he honestly has no idea who she is talking about, but her stern and quick-paced tone stirs a worming, disconnected shame in him that he isn't sure what to make of. "Um, don't know what came over me. You were saying?"

"Spare me your sarcasm," she says with no real malice. "I just wanted to let you know he came over to return it. He's moving again, somewhere in the Bay Area. I think he said he was going through the boxes in his garage and found all this stuff. I thought that was nice of him."

Carlos feels like he is intruding on a private moment, and doesn't press the issue. Probably the Emotion Delivery Service. They have some social awkwardness flavors, presumably to temper out the standard variations of terror.

They talk some more about his sister's promotion, his mother's recent knitting spree, and the finale of Breaking Bad. Carlos hangs up the phone fifteen minutes later, still feeling like he is forgetting something minutely important. 

 

\-----------

 

The next call Carlos takes is a day later, and it's from Cecil. Most of his recent calls are. 

After putting the phone down, Carlos buries his head in his palms. "The third law of thermodynamics," he murmurs. "Why did I have to go into that?"

He knows why. His heart stutters a bit when he hears Cecil talk, and apparently, so do his social manners. He feels compelled to talk at Cecil the way he used to write down his thoughts and observations on paper: to arrive at a conclusion, or to embed something in his memory. He remembers every conversation he has with Cecil. Unfortunately, most of them are painfully awkward.

Carlos isn't blind to his affections, of course, and it's not as if he doesn't like Cecil. It's just... when he's with him, out on the edge of his vision, Carlos will see shadows, movement, murmurs that disappear when he turns to face them head-on. It unsettles him.

Cecil is slippery and unforgettable; Carlos thinks he will see him in bittersweet, reverent nightmares for the rest of his life, even if he were to forget him when he leaves Night Vale.

(A slithering thought: if he ever leaves?)

 

\-------------

 

Carlos lies still and almost naked in the trembling desert heat, his thoughts running in circles again. He thinks about mountains and memory. He replays a memory about when he was a kid, and a friend's older brother told them ghost stories, seeing if it would change. It's the one where the traveler goes through a mountain town that isn't on the map, pokes his nose where he's not supposed to, and dies. He was furious after that, and also scared. He was really into mountain hiking when he was a kid. Still is, in a way—just from a distance. He stopped the trips sometime during college.

He recognizes the significance of mountain gear for half a second before the connection is abruptly and irrevocably lost, and Carlos can only grasp at empty space where moments ago a memory was. He reaches for another—his undergrad thesis project. He must have written one, but he didn't. He didn't. He doesn't even remember going to college. Carlos feels his heart speed up, and then there is the sudden need to run, get out, get away, invert his head that is suddenly too tight. Is there even anything to remember?

Hysterically, Carlos thinks he should be exasperated with himself by now. He traces an infinity sign in the air with his eyes and takes slow, calculated, shuddering breaths. Exhale longer, activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Tense facial muscles, hold, relax, repeat with next muscle group. The small tricks he developed to deal with the near-constant levels of adrenaline and existential terror native to Night Vale kick in almost automatically, layering over what is either much older instinct or fairly recently developed anxiety. 

His counting slows down minutes or hours later, and the viscous threads of lost past creep back into his indirect attention. It's almost worse than not remembering at all.

Carlos picks up his phone and creates a new file, hands still shaking a little. He trusts that he knows himself enough to fill in what he can't remember, but it can't hurt to write it down. He is not concerned with privacy. It's not like the Secret Police doesn't likely have most of in on file somewhere, anyway.

 

\--------

 

When Poetry Week arrives, he writes:

I'm glad I can finally write things down.  
I don't know what to write down.  
I guess I'm out of practice.  
Wow, words.  
I think  
I'm much more likely to scream when something scares me,  
But maybe he meant terror and fear as different things.  
A better question would be whether I'm ever even making a sound.  
I want to ask better questions.  
Does this even qualify as poetry?  
I sure hope so, because  
The City Council is fucking terrifying.

 

\-----

 

Carlos thinks he might be forgetting what his life was like before Night Vale. It bothers him, but not nearly as much as he would have imagined it would in those rusted, reconstructed memories.

He thinks of what could have caused it, because he is a scientist, and scientists always think of what causes things. Most of the time. Sometimes, fleetingly.   
Admittedly, he wouldn't put it past the SSP to spike Big Rico's pizza with a variety of drugs, including ones inducing memory loss. Carlos makes a list of all the meds he knows to have fitting side effects. He immediately rejects most of the drugs used to treat high cholesterol and hypertension, on the ground that these would never allow Night Vale residents their exceptional levels of alertness. Though that could certainly explain how they manage to fall asleep every night.

(His own sleep habits have been getting more erratic.)

He hypothesizes that he could have been re-educated. He could never determine what exactly re-education entailed, as the people he interviewed seemed to have no idea themselves—and if they did, they never told. 

In fact, he almost wants it to be that, but he can't let himself work around wishful thinking.  
The residents of Night Vale, he noticed, have a habit of blaming a lot of personal things on external factors. He thinks, however, that the real answer is far more…inconvenient, or terrifying.

He keeps thinking of the ghost story his friend's brother told them when they were kids. The one where the traveller goes through a mountain town that isn't on the map, pokes around where he's not supposed to, and never leaves.

 

\---------

 

"Carlos—no. No!"

All three of them knew this would happen. The inevitability of Carlos staying in Night Vale had loomed over them for a long time now, filling the corners of the lab and seeping into their conversation as an unacknowledged fact. Leah had held onto wistful hope, drawing self-assured plans for how drunk they would get and where as soon as they returned to the university. He thinks she could almost see it happening when, three days ago, he returned from the bowling alley in a coat of small bandages and traces of dried blood. He can only be thankful they hadn’t been listening to Cecil's program a couple of hours earlier. Right now, she looks like she's about to cry—or shout, anyway.

"You can't. The grant is up. You don't even—do you even know what you're doing for a job?"

Carlos does. Continuous research demands various contacts, and after asking around a month ago, he was promptly introduced to the editor of NOVA, a promising interdisciplinary science publication. They needed a reviewer with a wide background and solid instincts.   
He tells her as much. She stops him mid-sentence:

"Carlos, no! Stop. You can't—you're not seeing yourself clearly. An editor? Please. I know you're not meant for that, and you know it, and I don't know why you're going to sacrifice your career for—for this! This place will kill you! This place almost killed you! I just—how can you even... ?"

Leah's voice is loaded with screaming, but she talks on in an only slightly higher pitch than usual. Abner, standing in the watered-down light of the open door between two suitcases, looks lost and a little frightened, and it occurs to Carlos that they have already mourned him. He doesn't say anything. 

"Please. Just come for a couple of weeks. Get some perspective, ok? I know, I understand how attached you are to this town, and I know how incredible it is. It's frightening, but, you know, I just don't think staying here is the best thing for you right now. Our time is up. You can't… complete your research here, Carlos. There's too much, too…everywhere. Just take a break, that's all I'm asking for. You can return here at any time after this."

He knows that she hopes he won't, that instead he will return to their university and revert to his old self, just like lifting a spell. Night Vale has made them all justifiably superstitious. Her suggestion is very logical, though, and he readily admits to the possibility of the town exerting some kind of influence on him, just like in the ghost stories he was told as a kid. He can't help but draw parallels to decontamination that researchers go through after spending time in quarantines or other infectious areas.

The thing is, he doesn't want to get disinfected.

"I'm coming home for Christmas," he offers, sidetracking the main issue. Leah draws a deep breath.

"I'm glad you are. That's not the point, though. We're worried about you. We are worried about you, Carlos. This town is going to eat you alive. We survived this long together—and we were a damn good team—but holy shit if you're going to tell me you're going to stay here alone! Think. Trisha died. Kyle died. Jeffrey and Hsuan were sent home with injuries. You can't handle this,"—she gestures around the lab— "alone! Please! You know I'm being reasonable! To us, to me, you look like you've worked yourself into fucking Stockholm Syndrome! Carlos..." she steadies herself visibly when Abner puts a hand on her shoulder. "Please."

"I'm not ready to leave," Carlos says quietly.

There is a tight silence, the cool morning sun spilling too much light over the emptied hallway.

Abner walks up and envelops Carlos into a bear hug, taking all the air out of his lungs. It doesn't last long, though.

"Don't die, you got me?" he offers in a hushed tone. "I'll be watching."

Carlos smiles genuinely for the first time in the morning. During the past year, the shy and grounded Abner developed a strange eloquence after this town's radio: intimate, jocular and slightly menacing. 

"I'd be glad if you both kept in touch," he addresses them, and watches Leah throw her hands in the air.

"You're crazy," she says as she goes through the door to load up the pick-up truck. 

Carlos thinks back to when they arrived. Half of the original team left during the first month, but for some reason they never got replacements.

Then the deaths came.

It seems... not too significant, somehow. He grieves them, of course, misses them bitterly; but the process is very unlike the grieving he has done for his grandparents, or his father, or even the coworker from his part-time job during grad school who died in a car accident. This seems... lighter, somehow, less impending to his life. Less potent.

He looks down from the truck to note the inconsistency in his growing file. He thinks he might have to pick up psychology. 

 

\-----------

 

After the subway incident, Carlos clears out the clutter in his lab, dutifully ignoring the dark and dusty corners. After some thought, he moves his Battlestar Galactica poster downstairs. He organizes his papers and throws out old handwritten notes, and finds his old Nightvaleian clock buried underneath. 

It's ticking, yet no sound comes out, and Carlos thinks that it's the furthest from silence he has ever been.

 

\-----------

 

Carlos touches the slightly oily, tender skin behind Cecil's ear, traces the memory of dark circles beneath his eyes. 

The phrase from the earlier broadcast is still circling his thoughts, like a vulture.

He thinks Cecil is wrong about terror. He doesn't think it's fear that forces Night Vale to walk the line between knowing and articulating, or even the likely cognitive dissonance. 

"What's on your mind?" Cecil says with his eyes closed.

He doesn't say anything, and Cecil understands him perfectly.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I... am not a scientist. Not even close.
> 
> This started as an exploration of the thing Carlos said in Episode 38, "Organge Grove", the "I am a scientist, I study science" thing. And evolved into something completely unrecognizable.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it despite the lack of plot.
> 
> Karim Nader is a real person with real research, and his article is quoted verbatim. You can find it at http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n3/abs/nrn2590.html.
> 
> Thank you to Marisol, the beta. You were a big help.


End file.
